"I want to speak a word or two with you, Mr. Sheriff. Take my horse to the door of the inn, Zed--I suppose he will be safe. He is a very faithful fellow, and has saved my life."
"Oh, quite safe," answered the sheriff. "Don't you see we have as many blacks as whites here? This bad spirit is by no means general. Had it been so, we might have fared worse; though it has been bad enough, God knows, as it is." Zed led away my horse; and, being left nearly alone with the sheriff, I explained to him my anxiety about Bessy; told him the cause I had to suppose that she had been found in the wood by Colonel Halliday, and carried to some place of safety; and asked if he had seen that gentleman in the town.
"Oh, yes, he was here a little while ago," answered the sheriff. "He brought in several ladies with him, but I really did not notice who they were. He took them to the inn, I think, and you had better see if you can find Miss Davenport there."
[CHAPTER XXVIII.]
I know no more anxious, more irritating, more painful occupation in the world than that of seeking (when we are apprehensive and doubtful of the fate of one we love) amongst a great, confused and pre-occupied crowd, for some traces of the lost one. It has been my fate twice in life to aid in the search for a strayed child; and the agony of the father communicated itself, in part at least, to me, and gave me the power of feeling a portion of all the torture which imagination inflicted upon him at that moment. Every one we speak to seems so selfish, so volatile, so obdurate, that we can hardly believe there is anything like feeling or sympathy in the human breast; when, perhaps, scanned accurately, our own sensations would be found to be selfish, and our own accusations return upon our own head. Who could tell, in that mixed crowd, what were the motives, what the feelings, what the doubt and dread, which created the sort of fierce anxiety in my heart? Who could see in my look, or detect in my voice, more than the most minute portion of that anxiety? Yet, I felt a very unreasonable degree of anger and irritation at the utter indifference of every one around me to all that was going on within my breast. I forced my way, however, onward towards the door of the inn; but before I reached it, a fresh little party entered in the town, and cut across my path, presenting that strange mixture of the ludicrous and the horrible, which is, perhaps, more dreadful than the purely tragic. Doctor Blunt, the whole of the party from his house, and two or three mounted dragoons, who had joined them somewhere on the way, were bringing the prisoners, now increased to three by the presence of one of the wounded men, who had recovered sufficiently to walk into the county capital. First came two or three horsemen, and some more armed men brought up the rear; but between the two bodies of whites marched the poor black fellows who had been taken, very much as they had appeared when they attacked the house, except that their muskets had been cast away. The first of the negroes (for they marched in single file) was the man whom I had captured myself, with a gay scarf over his shoulders, and a handsome regimental sword by his side, which I had not thought it worth while to take away. He carried something in his hands, which I could not distinguish clearly till he came into the blaze of the torches; and then, to my disgust and horror, I saw that it was the bloody head of one of his late companions--the very head which had so strongly excited the scientific enthusiasm of the phrenologist, who had doubtless cut it off, before he quitted the scene of strife, to place the skull as a specimen in his collection. The party halted directly opposite the inn door, and several of the officers, who were gathered together there, advanced to take a look at the prisoners. One of them seemed to recognize the man with the head, but that attracted his professional eye but little. The scarf and the sword were "matter more attractive;" and, giving a light touch to the hilt of the latter, he said,--
"Why, Nelson, where did you get this?" The negro instantly raised the swarthy head in his hands in the full torchlight, and replied,--
"This here gentleman gave it me last night." A loud burst of laughter, very horrible to hear, broke from the whole party round at the idea of the man's calling a dead negro's head "this here gentleman;" and I must say, the captive negroes themselves, with the certainty of being hanged within a few days after, joined in the laugh as heartily as any of the rest. I could not do so; and pushing my way through the throng, I entered the inn. The passage was crowded to suffocation; the bar, which lay on the right hand, was surrounded by a mob, two-thirds of whom were drunk, and the rest hardly sober; and before I had taken ten steps through the mass, I had been invited to drink at least as many times by persons I had never seen in my life before. I remarked that they did not seem at all pleased when their invitation was declined; but I was in no very polite mood, even if I had been at any time inclined to get drunk for the pleasure of strangers; and I made my way straight for the foot of a staircase, round the bottom of which the crowd was reeling to and fro, not quite so densely packed together. Four or five steps up, supported by two strapping mulatto wenches, was a stout, well-fattened white woman, whom I judged, by her dress, to be the mistress of the house. The moment I set my foot upon the stairs, however, she screamed at me in a tone calculated to drown all the din below.
"You can't go up, sir. The whole above-stairs is occupied by ladies; and as some of them have nought but their night-dresses on, they don't want no company."
"But, my good madam," I said, "I saw two or three gentlemen amongst the ladies in the balcony."
"That's nothing here nor there," answered the Amazon. "Them gentlemen have brought in friends, and have a right to stay with them."